Patricide
by Isolee
Summary: The old man says, "Even your father", as if that would hold any special meaning to him.


Before Connor knew the word, he had an idea, an inkling about what it should mean to kill one's own father. The complexity of blood kin as opposed to family."Who is my father" had to be irrelevant in the greater scope of things, giving way for questions that actually mattered: "What is a father?"

The sort of father figure Achilles tried so desperately to be, as opposed to a man he had heard of, but never met.

He thought about blood many times, not least during the times Achilles was unusually grumpy – like when his leg gave him grief; when it rained, when it snowed, or the sun shone wrong, or whichever excuse suited the old man at the time. In those early days, it mostly concerned frustration with Connor's slow progress. There was never a lack of it, Connor stood stubbornly fast to, but maybe the thought of blood scared him when he _didn't_ think about it.

He supposed no one would begrudge him the dislike of Haytham Kenway, such as it was in his teenage years – so raw, and angry, but mostly confused - and so it disturbed him to no end when some part of him would twitch or jump at the sight of his father's face staring down from that dimly lit wall in the manor basement. Sometimes the eyes seemed cold, sometimes as if they contained no malevolence at all, no matter how much Connor searched for it. Those few times he saw Haytham on the streets of Boston or on a square in New York, his heart would race, or his breath would hitch violently, but Connor could not for the world of him understand why.

That is, he understood _why_ – the man was his father. They even shared some looks, as if he had asked for further evidence.

But what Connor could not understand was why that would mean anything to him. Haytham had only ever been a symbol for that was wrong with the Colonies, with Connor's world, and from what he had heard, the world's beyond even those.

"You are a foolish boy, Connor, for all that you are intelligent." Achilles had told him over the noise of carpenters in the parlor and woodworkers in the yard. "Haytham may have been but a myth to you for seventeen years, but now he is real, and you have to deal with the consequences of that."

Connor might have let slip his polite exterior at this - if only because he knew that the old man would not take serious offence (and is that what family means, or are they just dysfunctional?) – and said something of fathers and senility that earned him a trip to the Bahamas during a particularly stormy season, armed with his foul mood and new curses the sailors had for so long done their best to make him use.

But the thoughts he carried with him, and their constant churning in his head gave him headaches, they made him clench his jaw and his mood suffered terrible ups and downs, as if he was a ship without a rudder. But to think he was helpless and had no control of the events in his life could even make him loose his footing in the trees as a sudden attack of vertigo would accost him.

"My dear!" Diana had exclaimed when he had asked for her opinion – on a much edited version of the real events. She'd and smoothed her skirts in a show of such absolute seriousness, as if she had been asked to review battle plans and not an apparent teenage mystery. "To me, it sounds as if you are trying to come to terms with the fact that your father is a mere person."

Connor doubted silently that anyone had ever called the templar grandmaster a mere person before, and some of it must have showed on his face, for Diana's obvious struggle for words had made her frown go deeper than Connor had ever seen it before.

"Most children have to realise, sooner or later, that their parents aren't perfect, Connor. They come to question their parents' actions and values as they start making decisions for themselves. Parents are real people, who are – fallible." She had looked gently at him when she said this, as if he was one of her or Catherine's boys and required comfort after stubbing his toe. "Mayhap you just haven't had time to go through that yet."

While trying to forgive her for inadvertently calling him a child, Connor had thanked her and excused himself. Trying her words, he thought that, if anything, it must be the other way around. The father he had constructed out of hearsay was growing into a killer in his head without the specks of good in him that most people possessed. A perfect murderer.

He hadn't thought such evil men could exist.

And so it was, that winter's day when Haytham had ambushed him in the abandoned church and promised to cut his throat.

_This is a bond purely in blood_, Connor had thought then. One that would be sealed only when one of them had died by the other's hand.

But was he not intrigued? Did he not wonder who this man was, and why? Connor had thought of it as a failure when he did not kill Haytham, but getting at Haytham had to wait, for there was something bigger in play than vengeance, or vindication, affirmation, or whatever it was he sought. Years of constructing this nemesis out of the ash and sorrow he had left behind him, and Connor had to stay his hand for the greater good.

All that would change, of course. And curse it for changing! Morbid fascination could soon no longer justify the growing need to satisfy his curiosity for this man – and he was a man, Connor saw. Haytham was no demon, and he was no devil. Achilles would not agree, of course, and did not, the time Connor dared voice his thoughts.

"You cannot change a man like Haytham," the old man had said, and had been angry, or disappointed. Most likely both.

"And I cannot change your mind, because you are much too similar," Connor had retorted, and left so swiftly that Achilles hadn't been able to hobble after him.

And now, a week into the chase after Church, a stormy night on the Caribbean Sea, Diana's word come back to him, and he realises that "truth" is a much too complex word – one he thought could have but one side to it, not several. He had never thought a deed could be judged by anything other than by if it was morally right or wrong, never thought that it's consequences could be a factor. But Haytham is nothing if not possessed of an ambiguous nature. That he is Connor's father, there can be little doubt about, and that he is a man, not a monster, Connor can determine from his involuntary shivers, his disgruntled face, his disgust as he forces rainwater from the folds of his cloak. That somehow, everything he had done had been justified on a scale Connor has never considered. Events are not simply out of his control, he thinks – they are completely autonomous of him.

And still.

Still, Connor thinks, as he reaches out without thinking, just to feel the material of Haytham's drenched crimson waistcoat – he has no ties to this man, no feelings of familiarity, and had only ever thought of him as a concept.

The captain's cabin is humid from two days of bad weather and drying clothes on makeshift clotheslines, but if muffles the noises of the sailors still on deck making their night safe in the small cove where they had dropped their anchor. The rain is still beating hard against the windows, but the restless part of Connor can ignore it and the waste of time for maybe one evening.

In a moment, Haytham has spun around and grabbed his wrist in his hand, shivers and misery replaced by a guarded suspicion.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asks, and Connor makes a half-hearted attempt to get his hand back. Haytham won't budge, but his eyes look less worried.

"What are you afraid of?" Connor asks instead, and if he had noticed years ago that his even tone confused or even provoked people, it was spoiled on Haytham.

"I am not afraid, boy. I am being cautious," says Haytham. "As far as I know, Oedipus and Cronus are your greatest inspirations."

Connor regards his hand in comparison to Haytham's. They don't look much at all like each other, which he supposes only confirms his line of thought, even if there's probably no "merely" about it. Connor's fingers are long, badly calloused and weather worn. Haytham's are soft underneath the skin his sword had hardened.

"Patricide," Connor nods and relaxes his arm, the weight of the limb forcing Haytham to take an unwilling half-step closer. "As opposed to filicide?"

Haytham looks at him from above the ridge of his long nose. His upper lip curls as he lets go of Connors wrist. He says, amusedly, "Patricide is a big word."

"My old man had me look it up," Connor admits. An almost imperceptible shudder seems to run through the older man's body. Were he not Connor, and was he not standing so very close, he might have missed it.

"So I'm not your old man?" Haytham murmurs "See, that is a relief, at least."

"No," Connor agrees. "You are simply _an_ old man."

Momentary surprise in Haytham's eyes is followed by a forceful tug in a moment where Connor's attention is unguarded. His mind sees no objection to Haytham trapping both his arms in incredibly strong grips. _And why should it?_ he thinks as the man presses him close. "Now, see, I didn't you were quite capable of humor."

Connor has a mind – or, perhaps, no mind at all – to tell him just _what_ he is capable of, but it went nowhere from that. Nowhere, or somewhere, but to a where of no importance – hell, he has no notion.

It was not the first time Connor kissed someone, or even let someone kiss him. It might just have been the first time he is kissed as if the person pressing up against him wanted to do nothing more. And if he found himself coming undone underneath the tongue against his own, he knew for sure this time that Haytham was just as undone, because a hand has left his wrists and moved on to grip his hip, to push him towards the wall that does nothing to bring him back to his senses when he whacks his head against it.

It makes sense that Haytham would be as raw a lover as he is a leader. Teeth moves up Connor's throat, across his jugular, and he is happy that he's come to terms, as Diana had called it, when Haytham's laboured breathing is in his ear and he can focus on unbuttoning the red coat that had started it all.

There's a heat and hunger that Connor never would have counted on, but which now threatens to make him lose his head, and he is so busy trying to regain it, and with it, the idea about how on earth you unbuckle a swords belt from the wrong angle, that he gasps and then groans when hands pushes his trousers past his hips.

"What?" Haytham demands, all rough and brutal as if his nature is to be none other than he is.

"Vertigo," Connor mutters, his mind soaring or falling, he can't tell.

When Haytham forces him down on the cot, and his tongue has reached Connor's navel, he thinks it will all be over before it's even begun. But Haytham knows precisely what he's doing, and even though the vertigo doesn't go away, Connor can feel it. It's a game of friction, and breathing, he reminds himself, is a part of it. The warmth and the tightness when Haytham finally wraps his hand around him could make him forget that, and so much else – like that they're on a ship with hundreds of other souls, and never could have acted or made their decisions in a space completely void of past decisions and regrets.

There are nails digging into flesh and not enough room as their bodies press together, and Haytham hisses and groans in turns, demands and gives orders and swears. Connor's hand is gripping Haytham's hair tightly, but he can't let go, not when Haytham buries himself completely, and he's repeating a mantra of _move, move_ that seems to make the other man lose his control entirely. He clings to Connor, pushes harder, and then suddenly he can let go.

They catch Church two days after that, and it's when Connor knows that things cannot be the way they have been. People are messy, and they're human, he realises. Mistakes that he made himself and mistakes Haytham made are not dissimilar because they were trying to achieve different things, but because they were motivated by different reasons. Whether you are utilitaristic or bound by a creed, you can try to predict the future, but you can never shape it to your exact vision, and Haytham cannot see that.

In the end, it was never about patricide, he tells himself on another rainy night when events have seemed not just to have spiralled out of control, but as if they are mocking his attempts to make them right. In the end, it was about the means as well as the consequences, and about being a pawn.


End file.
